Open and Welcome Thread: December 2020
If you have something to share that doesn’t feel like a full post, add it here!
(You can also create a Shortform post.)
If you’re new to the EA Forum, consider using this thread to introduce yourself!
You could talk about how you found effective altruism, what causes you work on and care about, or personal details that aren’t EA-related at all.
(You can also put this info into your Forum bio.)
If you’re new to effective altruism, consider checking out the Motivation Series (a collection of classic articles on EA). You can also learn more about how the Forum works on this page.
I’d like to point people to this contest, which offers some prizes for forecasting research. It’s closing on January the 1st, and hasn’t gotten any submissions yet (though some people have committed to doing so.)
Hello everybody, I have been lurking on the forum for a while and thought I would introduce myself. I encountered EA earlier this year and while I am not as altruistic as many of you, I have become more altruistic than I was before. I have increased my donations, and reprioritized them to hopefully more effecient causes. I have also become almost vegetarian, a lifestyle change I never thought I would attempt.
I have no overaching moral theory. I am attracted to utilitarianism, but I also think there are lots of practical and theoretical problems with it so I am not going to pretend I am committed to it.
I have been very struck by the arguments for the importance of animal welfare. I have a lot of moral uncertainy on the topic, since any attempt to formulate ethical rules involving animals raises difficult questions in the philosophy of consciousness, utilitarianism versus other ethical theories, the inter-individual comparison of utilities and population ethics. Still, my intuition says that industrial scale animal cruelty is bad, and nothing in my attempts to philosophize makes me think that intution is wrong.
Welcome, Roger! 😊 Congrats on moving towards a vegetarian diet, even though you previously thought you wouldn’t have attempted it 👏
Hi Everyone,
One of my friend showed me the Ikigai test and it came that I am an Alturist Manager(project manager to be 100 percent true) who seeks interesting relationships. I noted this and a few months later after I earned enough capital to not focus on money too much for a while, I started my research on the topic about what really motivates me, this is how I ended up here :-)
I am still researching my own priorities at the moment, I think I would like to possibly organise a community where I live and start/get involved into conversations about effective alturism.
Thank you
Peter
Hello and welcome! What do you think this community would look like? I’m curious :)